


Black to White

by bad_decisions_at_2am



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Enemies to Lovers to Friends, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Unhealthy Kismesissitude, healthy moirails
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 19:24:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17514500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bad_decisions_at_2am/pseuds/bad_decisions_at_2am
Summary: Deceit and Virgil understand each other but don't get along (until they do).





	Black to White

When it starts it isn’t about affection or understanding. It's before they are given physical forms, long before the others accept Virgil, before either of them have anything close to a friend. Because Thomas subconsciously hates Virgil and he ignores the way Deceit helps him to stay afloat. Back then they were drawn together because they were alone and neither of them can stand it.

* * *

 

Without someone else to talk to, to keep him in the moment, Deceit is being driven half crazy as all of the truths and lies that the others tell themselves constantly hammer against his mind. And without someone to ground him after a panic attack or talk him out of his own self-destructive thought loops, Anxiety spends more time than not curled up in his room being battered at by the shadows. So when Deceit gets called to him, pulled along by the other facet’s insistence on lying to himself about his ability to handle all of Thomas’s stress, he does what he does best.

“Oh you’re so well-adjusted aren’t you? Just the absolute pinnacle of Thomas’s self-control and reason. Nothing could _possibly_ rattle your unbreakable nerves of steel.” He hisses coldly, watching with satisfaction as Virgil’s features go from pale and drawn to tight and furious in a matter of seconds. “How would we survive if not for you?”

“At least the others know I exist.” The words have no right to cut as deeply as they do. They shouldn’t cut at all. He likes being anonymous, he likes that the others don’t fully realize how much they rely on him to keep their basic functions in check, but he doesn’t like the way the words roll like tar off Anxiety’s tongue.

He doesn’t remember what he says next, or what Anxiety says, or how they go from screaming to kissing to tangled up in sheets. But he does remember it was because they couldn’t figure out what else to do with each other. So they decided to hate. It’s easier that way.

* * *

 

They go back and forth like that for a while, sometimes he seeks out Anxiety, sometimes Anxiety finds him, and they yell and argue in the darkest corners of Thomas’s mind until they go away feeling a little bit better and a little bit worse.

And then they’re given real bodies.

Patton, Logan, and Roman are given physical forms first. And it’s something new and exciting (and terrifying. Thomas is working Anxiety to the point of a breakdown wondering if he’s gone insane. Scared of someone finding out he can give his fantasies shape,) and exhausting. Deceit is in high demand as Thomas tries to wiggle away from his friends without causing too much suspicion so that he can explore this new world that’s been opened up for him.

When Thomas finally figures out that he wants to try making a video out of the anomaly Deceit helps him to put on a brave face, shoves Anxiety aside and keeps things on an even keel. He figures Anxiety is going to be annoyed about that, but they’ll sort it out later.

He isn’t expecting the other to piece together a physical form of his own to get back at him. (And now he knows it wasn’t fair of him to assume Anxiety’s becoming physical had anything to do with their squabbling.)

And then there are videos, more and more of them, a series, a fanbase, a  _story arc_. And Anxiety is at the center of it. They still spend time together but it starts to shift. They spend less time taking out their frustrations on each other and more time talking about the others, about Thomas, about the show. Anxiety even speaks up for him when they realize it will be some time yet until Deceit is given a body of his own.

They still argue. Loud and angry and free in the seclusion of Anxiety’s room. But the fighting was never about them in the first place. It was about helplessness and loneliness and resentment and gradually Deceit feels those things lessen in Anxiety. The tug in his gut that forced him to seek out the other facet isn’t as strong now, even though Anxiety seems to have grown quieter. Quiet Anxiety had always meant an eruption was coming and Deceit is careful around him. He tests the waters, pokes and prods gingerly at places that used to start a screaming match at the first glance, and for a long while he just doesn’t find anything.

(He doesn’t know if he’s disappointed or glad. Anxiety’s changing, coming out of his shell, growing into himself. That’s all good. But he can’t help but wonder if Anxiety is outgrowing him.)

* * *

 

And then he stumbles onto a landmine. He doesn’t mean to. He really genuinely doesn’t. They’d just been hanging out in Anxiety’s room, he’d been on the other’s bed playing with a rubix cube that might have at one point belonged to Logan before the colored stickers started falling off, and Anxiety had been reorganizing his CDs. They’d been talking, he’d made the other laugh and the tug in his gut was gone, it was nice. But all of the sudden Anxiety’s head and quirked towards the ceiling and he’d said,

“Oh, sounds like Thomas wants to start brainstorming for the next video.”

It isn’t a direct dismissal but it feels like one. Still, he’s desperate to hang onto the moment of peace between them. “Ignore him.”

Anxiety snickers and rolls his eyes. “Can’t, it’s rare I even get invited to these little scripting sessions. If I don’t go and give them an idea of what I want to talk about they end up having to ad-lib everything after I show up.”

“Then let them.”

“No way, I’ve just started getting on all of their good sides.”

Deceit grumbles, tossing the toy to the foot of the bed. “Yeah right, they’d be happier if you never showed up.”

Silence stretches for a long moment before the room starts to spin, Deceit doubling in on himself as the sudden and recklessly desperate tug on his powers comes from Anxiety. The shadows, little echoes of the other’s perpetual worry, surge in around them, swallowing nearly all the light in the room and disorienting him further.

“Anxiety?” He calls out into the dark, his insides tightening into knots.

“Get out.”

“I didn’t–”

“Get out!” And then the darkness is broken, a stream of light coming in from the door, and a shadow drenched with fear shoving him through it. He scrambles to regain his balance and go back to, to what he isn’t sure. To help Anxiety lie to himself? To help him through the riot of emotion his cruel offhand remark had caused? But the door slams shut behind him, and no matter how he searches after he can’t find it again.

* * *

 

He stays in the background after that. Watches  _Virgil_  reveal his name to the others, tries not to let that smart. (They’d been… something. Not something good maybe, but they’d been closer than any of the others. He’d thought that when Thomas finally subconsciously gave Anxiety a name that he’d be the first one to learn it.) The tug to seek out the other lessens, Virgil draws on his powers far less often than some of the others and Deceit is suddenly faced with the reality that he’s going to have to come out of the shadows someday soon.

* * *

 

It had been cheap to play at being Patton, to try and convince Virgil to side with him, to manipulate Roman into doing his will, and by the end of it if Virgil hadn’t been mad at him before, he most certainly is now.

And it doesn’t sit well with him. So after a week of wallowing in the uneasy feeling coiling around his gut, he finally goes to look for the door to Virgil’s room again. It’s a surprise when he’s able to find it after only a few minutes of searching.

It takes him another half an hour of staring at the nondescript construct before he’s able to raise a hand to knock. A quick little  _thud-thud_ , like a heart skipping a beat. He thinks his skips several as he waits for Virgil to open it.

“What is it?” The words are carefully disinterested. Virgil’s featured schooled into the picture of detached politeness. 

“I’m sorry for impersonating Patton.” There’s a lot of other things he could be sorry for. Sorry that he said something so unintentionally cruel, sorry for the things he said with cruel intentions, sorry he’d let his jealousy blind him from helping to set Virgil on the right path to find his truth. But that’s too much, and he doesn’t know how to say it. Doesn’t know he’s already started to make amends when he’d stopped letting Patton use his abilities to hide his sadness from the others.

But Virgil just considers him silently for a long moment before nodding, “Apology accepted.” And Deceit can’t find a lie in the words. At a loss for what else to say or do the other facet starts to turn from the door. But Virgil pauses him with a soft, “Hey, Deceit?”

“Yes?”

“Congratulations on getting a body of your own.” The sincerity cuts him to the core.

* * *

 

Things are different after that. There is the kind of stiff awkwardness when they're around each other that feels characteristic of a breakup. But they hadn’t been dating. They’d just been fighting, and fucking, and occasionally getting along. And since then something has shifted between them, something that makes falling back into that old pattern feel wrong.

But it feels natural when his scales shed for the first time to go to Virgil and ask for help. When Virgil can’t be talked down through logic, or positivity, or creative solutions, it’s so easy to just lie and say everything is okay until it isn’t a lie anymore. And then it becomes natural to spend hours in each other’s company talking about everything and nothing.

The other sides still don’t like him much. Neither does Thomas. (Nor a fair amount of the series’ fans.) But they’re working on it. All of them. Because Virgil likes him just fine. Because Virgil reminds them without having to say a word what it was like to be an outcast and how that made him a villain more than his actions ever did.

For his part Deceit wants to be worthy of the faith his friend is placing in him. He apologizes to Patton and Roman. He asks Logan to sit down with him and Thomas to have a real discussion about lying and the other functions he serves as part of the whole. He makes effort to consult with the others before lying when they have enough time for that. And the others still don’t like him, not how they like Virgil, but he thinks they’re starting to accept him. He thinks he even starts to feel the shape of a name starting to rise out of the back of his mind. It’s nothing concrete, but it’s enough to keep him trying.

* * *

 

He tells Virgil this, while they’re lying on his bed together, his head in Virgil’s lap and the other’s hands running absently though his hair. It’s nothing like the closeness or the touches that they used to share. Unlike before, Deceit knows that now he’ll leave feeling grounded and soothed. Knows that if he find himself at a loss that he has someone to turn to and help him find his way. And Virgil laughs at him.

It’s not a cruel laugh, not the biting sarcastic bark that he used to hurl at the others like a knife, but something far warmer and more sincere. Still. Deceit brings a hand up to Virgil’s face and pushes him. “That’s the last time I’m ever open and honest with you.” But even as he says it he knows it’s a lie.

“Don’t be a dick. I’m glad you feel that way.” He continues lightly. “You know I do too. The others have their own ways of helping, but you’re the only one I trust to tell me what I need to hear when I’m too far gone for the usual methods.” They lapse into a comfortable silence for a few minutes before Virgil adds, “You’re the best friend I have, you know.”

“You need to get higher standards then.” And he means it, even though he can’t imagine how much it would hurt for Virgil to take his advice to heart.

“Not a lot of opportunity to make friends when I can only interact with four other people.”

“I guess not. Especially not when you’re trying to bang one of them.”

Virgil tugs on his hair reproachfully. “Shut it.”

For once he listens. And hopes that after all the mess and bad and hurt that it took to get here that this is path their relationship stays on.

(Maybe if he plays a good wing-man he can help to guarantee it.)


End file.
